Last week I was making sweet & sour tofu and remembered a vaguely funny-slash-horrifying incident that happened a number of years back.
It must have been at least ten years ago. My girls were competent cooks even then (they are 23 now) and they were cooking sweet & sour. It would have been sweet & sour chicken those days.
Anyways, they were cooking and I was busy with I-don't-know-what and they came and told me the sauce was too thin so I told them to make a slurry with corn flour and water and add it slowly.
Now, remember I was distracted and I was relying on their competence. What I didn't realise was that they had never used corn flour before and they didn't know that it's real thickening power wouldn't be seen until the mixture boiled.
They came back to me a few times saying that it wasn't working and I kept telling them that I had been conservative in the amount I directed them to use so add a bit more.
You can see where this is going, right?
Eventually, something twigged and I realised there was something wrong and went to see what was happening.
By that time the thing had come to a simmer and turned into a gigantic glug of no-longer-sweet-or-sour cornflour mess.
It was dreadful. If I remember right we added an awful lot of orange juice and were obliged to eat it that night as there was really no plan B but I'm pretty sure the rest was given to the dog .......or binned.
I don't think we have ever had such a bad day in the kitchen as that one was!
The photo is not mine, I ate my tofu before I thought to photograph it!
I hope it was binned on the second night. And can remember a time when Plan B was an expensive option that we really couldn't take.
ReplyDeleteIt is years since I have had sweet and sour. My mother's (sweet and sour pork) was renowned...
Sweet & sour is a bit retro, I guess but I eat an awful lot of "retro" things that I believe to be just normal. A side effect of getting older!
Deletekylie,
ReplyDeleteI had a similar brown gravy incident when I was 14. I took the mess and dumped it behind the chicken yard before Daddy saw I wasted flour.
Behind the chicken yard :) would the chickens have eaten it?
DeleteDaddy might have seen it, so it had to go behind the chicken yard.
DeleteLOL! I once was put in charge of making the custard as a teen and was overgenerous with the good old Foster Clark's Custard Powder. I swear that you could have used it as a rubber ball. Mum was furious as I'd wasted all that milk (bearing in mind that I was making custard for a family of 12).
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing a couple of pints of milk were lost. Oh dear!
DeleteOops! I had an incompetent moment the first time I tried to make scrambled eggs - I kept complaining to my instructor that it looked like yellow soup - thankfully no harm done and I just had to turn the heat up.
ReplyDeleteSx
that's the last thing I expected you to say about scrambled egg! weirdest soup ever
DeleteSuch mishaps are necessary in the life of young people so that they don't repeat them in the future. I have had my share of such goof ups too. Instead of Tofu, we use cottage cheese which is called paneer here. I prefer that latter as it is tastier in an inexplicable way.
ReplyDeleteYes, I always think we learn best by making mistakes. It's sometimes painful but effective.
DeleteOne of my favourite Indian dishes is palak paneer
Oh lord you made me laugh. I have had similar effups with my cooking particularly on the tricky thickening scene. No plan B, in times of thrift and careful budgeting.
ReplyDeleteXO
WWW
I'm sure you can see it unfolding! and glad it made you laugh
DeleteAs long as your dog enjoyed the, er, Leftovers, Kylie.
ReplyDeleteYour poor lassies went to bed hungry, too late to send out for pizza.
How long has it been since I ate sweet and sour? I once haunted Chinese restaurants.
Read online: *The Chinese Gourmet Club* by Alex Belth (Deadspin).
Also, *The Chinese Gourmet Club* (The Stacks Reader).
Mario Puzo, Joseph Heller and other writers like George Mandel used to dine once a month in a famous New York Chinese restaurant. Heller could could out-eat Puzo.
Mandel (1920-2021) died in February the last of his generation of novelists.
I remember as a schoolboy seeing the first Chinese places open and they had a glamour which the Indian restaurants did not possess. They must be wonderful in Sydney.
I remember a Chinese restaurant in St. George's Cross, Glasgow, which was three floors up and famous for their Bird's Nest Soup.
Today George's Cross is a wasteland. As are so many areas. When heavy industry vanished do did our communities and our civic pride and our hope
Jack.
I meant to write:
DeleteWhen our heavy industry vanished SO did our communities and our civic pride and our hope. The shopping malls and glass buildings selling clothes are anonymous.
See YouTube:
*Jordan Peterson: The collapse of our values is a greater threat than climate change.* September 24 2021.
I admire Jordan Peterson, who was close to death not long ago, and cannot think why he is held in such contempt by certain people.
He is a classic liberal (in his own words) and not Alt.Right.
He speaks well about Christianity. A troubled and very highly strung man.
Jack
Hi Jack,
DeleteI also once haunted Chinese restaurants. The father of my children is Malaysian Chinese and he introduced me to a whole world of food and culture. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought there were restaurants only selling noodles; yum cha is still a cherished favourite of mine and i have been to many a twelve course wedding banquet (one was my own).
I still love a good Chinese meal but it never seems to be the #1 choice around here, too many options :)
All of my life, Chinese restaurants have been around Australia, every country town has one, for Australians the local Chinese is like the local curry house.
"The shopping malls and glass buildings selling clothes are anonymous."
you got it in one. The longer I stay away from those places the more I never want to go back, nasty, places that encourage us to do all that will harm ourselves and the planet.
I'll check out the video :)
Ah the infamous cornstarch accident. I think just about everyone has had a similar occurrence at least once!
ReplyDeleteWe usually manage to salvage something from kitchen mistakes bu t this one was BAD. I didn't realise how many people would have the same story
DeleteSweet and sour tofu is one of our favourite meals. We've never had the cornflour debacle, but plenty of other kitchen disasters of one kind or another. Like pizzas accidentally left in the oven far too long until they were burnt to a cinder.
ReplyDeleteTalking of pizza, my very first practical cooking lesson at school was pizza. There were four of us working together and somehow there was a miscommunication about exactly who was getting it out of the oven. The whole pizza ended upside down on the oven door. The teacher nearly lost her mind
DeleteThat looks delicious.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty good!
DeleteI recently made a cheese sauce and as I was making the roux it wouldn't thicken. After a while I decided to add some cornflower. It still wouldn't thicken until I realised that guests had used the microwave and set it to 'oven' instead of 'microwave'. I set it to microwave. The roux went solid and had to be disposed of. At least I had more ingredients and hadn't added the cheese. I love sweet and sour but have never developed a liking for the texture of tofu.
ReplyDeleteGraham, I've never used the microwave to make a roux, it never even occurred to me but it would have to be better than scrubbing out a pot.
DeleteI'm ok with tofu, I still prefer chicken but we aim to eat vegetarian about 90% of the time.
That does look delicious. I've never found firm tofu to be very palatable but it's probably because I wasn't using it right. I do like the soft version as a dessert, though.
ReplyDeleteKitchen disasters seems to be a topic we can all relate to. I once melted a plastic vegetable colander when the pot of water it was in boiled dry. Another time I set the fringe of a tea towel on fire when it touched the red-hot oven burner. Not that many years ago I accidentally poured most of a jar of summer savoury into my Christmas dressing; luckily it could be scooped out and the dressing was saved even thought the jar of spice was a write-off. I've never had a sauce go too thick; I have the opposite problem - too-thin gravy or sauce. Probably from trying to avoid your daughters' problem :)
Hi Jenny-o, I'm going to guess that colander smelled pretty bad!
DeleteI regularly put the veggies in the compost and the scraps where the veggies should go. IT's an easy fix though.
I made a tofu dessert recently and wasn't keen. Firm tofu is improved if it's frozen before use
Back in the day when I cooked, like when I was 17/18, I had my fair share of disasters. That's probably why I don't cook nowadays.
ReplyDeleteToo many disasters would certainly take the joy out of cooking!
DeleteHa ha, I can just see that meal ending up like a brick with all that cornflour! It is treacherous though isn't it!
ReplyDelete